Some lists after a month and 5,200+ miles (plus a quick plane trip to Florida)

My thoughts on real issues related to our recent travels (i.e. witches, immigration, and travel itself) are still fermenting, just like the kimchi I intended to make with the daikon and Napa cabbage I bought Saturday.  So, here are a few easy to assemble lists.

Providence

States visited: 19.  Two to four new ones for me (Rhode Island and Connecticut were entirely new, but I had previously turned around after accidentally crossing a bridge into Maine previously, and had spend many hours at the Miami airport, but not outside it).  The Mister and I are both officially at 49 (with Hawaii left for him and Alabama for me), although I don't think either his Anchorage airport adventures nor my Hawaii and Alaska travels at under a year count.

Capitols observed from the interstate: Oklahoma City, Topeka, Des Moines, Lansing, Boston.  Capitols observed more closely (from the outside): Madison, Providence.

Hartford, evidence with the legs of Nathan Hale

Capitol entered: Hartford.  I think my mother is still winning this competition. I lost an advantage I had with Richmond, Dover, and Annapolis two years ago and this trip she and Dad added Albany, Hartford, Providence and Harrisburg.  They are planning a trip to Bismark and Pierre in September, so until I go to Juneau, my only remaining edge will be Raleigh.

Boats ridden: a bunch.  I think that's a separate post.

Good friends and good relatives seen:  Also a bunch.

Fingerprints to show I was inside in Hartford

Pies eaten: Only 4 (?).  Grape from Naples, NY in Rockport, MA.  Rhubarb (good flavor but lacking crust) and Oh No! (chocolate pecan) in Fremont, Indiana.  Strawberry Rhubarb in Princeton, IL and Triple Berry in Pella, Iowa.

Gelato eaten:  Lots, in Newport, RI, Portland, ME, Rockport, MA, and twice in NYC.  Pistachio plus another flavor every place.  Plus frozen custard (Wisconsin and Illinois), and local ice cream (MA, NJ, PA and a soda fountain in Moline, Illinois).

Baseball games attended: 2.  Newport Gulls taking on the Plymouth Pilgrims and the Cleveland Indians beating the Detroit Tigers 10-0 after a rain delay.

Gully, the Newport Gulls Mascot

Musicals seen: 2.  Spongebob Squarepants, the musical, on Broadway.  A Year with Frog and Toad in Princeton, Illinois (I know the host family of the music director for the latter, and they got us great seats).

Interesting Food Eaten: Sri Lankan on Staten Island, Eritrean in Portland, Banh Mi in Syracuse . . . and so much more, which I suppose, is tied up with my thoughts on immigration, travel and "Americans" watch this space as fermentation happens.

Waiting out a rain delay

Indians won. Dianthus and I waited for the 11:30 fireworks.

But There Are No Chiggers On A Dream Trip

Despite being best buddies, Aster and Dianthus have the sibling habit of caring way too much about what is befalling the other.  Good things are sweeter if one can gloat that the other didn't get it.  Bad things are worse if the punishment is not shared, whether deserved or not. Unequal distribution leads to an uproar, even if one or the other doesn't particularly like whatever is being shared.

In other words, they are human.

I bring this up for two reasons.  The first is that I have an aunt who thinks that my brother and I didn't bicker in the back seat.  I don't know what evidence she used to conclude that, but I certainly don't want to mislead anyone about Aster and Dianthus.  I'll be clear-- Aster and Dianthus have abundant charms, and they can be really annoying individuals.

Secondly, I have witnessed this behavior too much in adults recently.  When hearing about things other people are doing: taking maternity leave; going on a long honeymoon, competing in long distance races; there have been responses of, "well, I didn't get any paid leave," or "knees don't really hold up after 50" not so much as a point of discussion but with an implied attitude of, "I didn't get to do that, nobody else should either."  Although it is just as unseemly when adults do it as when my kids declare that it is no fair the other gets to carry the towel bag (really), I've caught myself coveting when I read of friends taking a year or two to live in Mexico, or overlanding from Alaska to Patagonia, thinking, "Well, I couldn't up and leave for two years," as if that should have stopped them (read their blogs Slobe Family Adventure and When Sparks Fly, and for discussion of how to do it yourself, see The Practical Overlander).

So from the first day of driving in the rain across Arkansas, when I thought, "Wow, we are doing it again.  We are living the dream," I've wanted to write about the recent journey with my family.  And I keep getting stopped by the voices in my head telling me about all of the problems in the world and all of the problems faced by my friends.  There's a vague background chorus chanting, "Must be nice."

And the truth is, it is nice.  It is nice to have the Mister who wants to eat around the world with me. It is nice to have a job where I don't work in the summer.  It is nice to have the means to travel. It is nice to have great parents and in-laws who want to meet us in interesting places so they can hang with their grandkids.  It is nice to be able-bodied.  And I know full-well that having this combination is not the norm and will not last forever.  And my not appreciating it will in no way solve the problems of my friends or the world, nor will a lack of appreciation extend my window of opportunity.  So I'd better get over any hesitation and enjoy it while I have it.

So, we took a four-thousand-plus mile road trip (it is not as far to Hilton Head, South Carolina, as it is to Vancouver British Columbia, where we drove last year).  We saw, did, and ate lots.

One stop on our journey was a professional conference at which I was presenting.*  Strangely (for an academic conference), there was an option to camp and, also strange for an academic conference, one could sign kids up for a nature and art camp when one registered; which is how this whole trip came to be ("while we are going to Kentucky for the conference, we might as well go to West Virginia to see our old neighborhood.  While we are there, we might as well attend the folk festival.  Oh, there is time between conference and folk festival? well, we might as well go to the beach . . .).

When we arrived on Sunday night, late, having taken a wrong turn and driven the windy roads of southeast Kentucky twice, we weren't sure exactly what our reception would be.  A super-nice woman was willing to re-open the registration table, only to tell us that the road to the campground was impassably muddy, but if we would pull out our camping gear, she'd send somebody to shuttle us there. We were tired, cranky, swarmed by gnats and unloading our minivan in the mud

to pick out the camping essentials to be dropped off who knows where across a creek.  I commented to the Mister, while wondering how far I was going to have to slog in the mud in order to give my professional talk, "Yeah, camping with the family at a conference.  May go on the list among the craziest things I've done.  You'd think I'd know better."

Someday they will legitimately be able to say, "When I was young
we would go on vacation and there wasn't even a t.v.  So we played
barefoot in the creek all day.

And then it became magical.  The frogs were so loud they kept us up at night.  The freshly cut hay and the mountain magnolias left life smelling fresh and vaguely sweet.  If one stayed up late enough, the stars and the lightning bugs were amazing.  Dianthus and Aster bonded with the four other children in the kids' camp, and for four days they were inseparable, racing to establish their own table in the dining hall, helping each other on hikes, and playing barefoot in the creek for hours.

Little kids in big spaces

It was every bit as idyllic as it sounds.

Same spot: enlarged to show texture of trees

I know enough of the craft of storytelling to know that readers don't want uninterrupted sweetness.  But our trip overall, and our time at Pine Mountain in particular, was truly lovely, and nothing would be gained by sullying those memories.  Which is why I'll leave the discussion of the constant scratching of giant swollen chigger bites on both boys' genitalia off of this post.

*For the record, my severely budget constrained institution did not pay for any travel and I am never compensated for my time while attending summer conferences.

Home from (and in) Exotic Places

Upon their return to Colorado from a two week East Coast excursion (meeting us in Hilton Head towards the beginning) my mother told me what a great trip they had, and how it had almost felt like visiting a different country, with all the different, foods, accents, and environments.

Southeastern Kentucky.  So not Western Oklahoma.

It sounded silly when she said it, and I would have laughed, had I not just commented, two days before, when we arrived in Kansas City, in a hot haze over 100 degrees with a furnace blasting south wind and bad traffic, that it felt like home.  It wasn't just that the Mister was not alone in his Royals cap and Jayhawk shirt, it was that until then, from the first lunch in Fort Smith, it felt like we were somewhere else, someplace exotic, someplace vaguely foreign.  Grits and green tomato country covered by lots and lots of trees.*

South Carolina Swamp.  Also not Western Oklahoma.

Wandering around the town in West Virginia where I lived for four years didn't feel like a homecoming (except when seeing friends) and I kept muttering, "We used to live here? It's so green.  And so steep and so not like the places I live."  But I did live there.

When I returned to Western Oklahoma there was a similar sense of confusion, "Really?  This is where I live?" (and I never lived in Kansas City, which felt so home-like).  But my cat was here, and our house with its problems and lots of lots of zucchini and yep, I was back where I belong.

Central Kansas in May.  Not Western Oklahoma as well.

It's hard to explain the diversity of the US to people outside of it.  Its hard for me to fathom and I've driven huge swaths of it.  It's a pretty incredible place in so many ways.  So here is my annual celebration of the diversity of this country, and the greatness that can be found across it.  Happy Birthday US of A! With all of you're flaws, you are my home, and for that I am glad.

The Captains say, "Happy Birthday USA!"

*Anyone who complains that driving the interstate across Kansas is the most boring driving around hasn't driven the interstate across Georgia, flanked by plantation pines and nothing else for hundreds of miles.

2015 Americana Cheese photo here and 2014 here.

Travel Lists 1-5

We've returned from the second of our summer trips, with lots to report.  In the unlikely event that you are into lists as much as I am, here are a few:

Nashville

States (15): Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, home. (Now Dianthus wants me to list all of the states he has been to.  It's 29).  Georgia and South Carolina were new to the prairie dog (who hadn't picked up a new state since Arizona in 2013) and me (nothing new since North Carolina and Tennessee in 2008).

Not everyone is excited by state capitol buildings.

Atlanta.  I've been taking capitol dome selfies
since before I had a double chin or a digital camera.

State Capitol Buildings: 3 (all new to me) Nashville, Atlanta and Columbia (other capitols seen, if at a distance: Little Rock, Columbus, Indianapolis, Topeka).  This would be great news for my family capitol competition (I haven't picked up a new one since Annapolis in 2010), if my parents hadn't had a four capitol run (Atlanta, Richmond, Dover, and Annapolis) on their simultaneous trip.

Inside Columbia,
where actual legislating was happening

National Parks: Mammoth Cave, Cumberland Gap, Congaree, and Seneca Rocks National Recreation Area. This represents no value out of our National Parks Interagency Pass, as Cumberland, Congaree and Seneca Rocks  were free and we paid for the fabulous Domes and Dripstones Guided Tour through Mammoth Cave.  We purchased the pass at Rocky Mountain last June 1, and in the thirteen months we had it, managed to hit Rocky Mountain three times, Dinosaur, Golden Spike, Glacier, Yellowstone, Devil's Tower, Jewel Cave, Mt. Rushmore, Badlands, Capulin Volcano, White Sands, and Saguaro, in addition to those mentioned above.

Watching Frogs, Mammoth Cave National Park

Birds of Note: Whippoorwills, brown thrashers, brown pelicans*, anhingas*, barred owls* and great blue herons.

Other Animals of Note: turtles, frogs so loud they kept us up at night, lightning bugs, sting ray, horseshoe crab, luna moth, racoon, groundhogs (at which Dianthus shouts "marmot" when he spots one), many small lizards, a skink, newts (and salamanders and crawfish for the boys) and alligators.  Doesn't everyone go to Hilton Head for the wildlife?

*Birds new to my life list, if I had one.

Boy observing lizard

Luna Moth, Cave City, Kentucky

Lizard observing boy (just before fight with other lizard)

First alligator, the small one.

Medium Alligator.   Large alligator was much larger, much
closer and LOUD.  We did not hang around a take a photo.

Skink, Congaree National Park

Why didn't I add milkweed beetles mating to the list?

A Rodent in the Sun

Prairie Dog (a fairly close relative of groundhogs) popping up in Jasper National Park (where the glacier was not that long ago) to wish you and yours a happy groundhog day. 

Metaphorical sunshine and warmth are always good, but for many
organisms literal cold and snow are necessary.

On Rhubarb and Rodents

While every trip has an official destination (the recent one was the Vancouver-Yellowstone trip), and most have some personal significance (this one was Women's World Cup - my Mother's big birthday- Mister's Parents' 50th anniversary [and possibly our 10th]), many also acquire an unofficial agenda.

Columbian on guard in Canadian Rockies

Yellowstone-Glacier 2004 (what I call our engagement trip) became the Quest for All Things Huckleberry.  Canadian Maritimes 2008 was the Where Eat Seafood in Canada trip and last summer we embarked upon "I states can be interesting" or something like that.

Uinta grooming in Yellowstone

This trip was about rodents (but then they all are) and rhubarb.  We weren't crazy about rhubarb like we were about huckleberries in 2004, but we did have  rhubarb several times before we left and proceeded to buy a rhubarb-strawberry gallete-let at the Farmers' Market in Osoyoos, British Columbia, ate the most rhubarb-y rhubarb pie I have ever experienced (along with a piece of intriguing Rhubarb-Raspberry-Jalapeno) at the Purple Pie Place in Custer, South Dakota. drank a fresh rhubarb shake in Murdo, South Dakota, sampled a wonderful Sour Cream Rhubarb pie from Broken Bow, Nebraska and there picked up some rhubarb stalks to fix into something wonderful here.  We also ate rhubarb yogurt in Vancouver, because it was something different and sorta Canadian.  Independently, my mother just sent a photograph of her third large rhubarb harvest of the season.

Notice the shoulder humps!

As for rodents, well, I would have to consult the Mister's exhaustive animal list, but it includes this Columbian Ground Squirrels from Canmore, Alberta, this Uinta Ground Squirrels in Yellowstone, and this Yellow-bellied Marmot in Custer State Park (just a few yards from where we saw his relative 8 years ago).  Non-rodents included bears (both black and grizzly, like these at Banff), bald eagles and sea otters, and big horn sheep in many places, including the verdant (!) pastures of Badlands National Park.

Prairie Dog picked up two new provinces (British Columbia and Alberta) and we probably received full value of our National Parks Interagency Pass (Rocky Mountain, Dinosaur, Golden Spike, Glacier, Yellowstone, Devil's Tower, Jewel Cave, Badlands).  Canada, along with Idaho, Washington, Montana, Wyoming, and South Dakota were all new for both Dianthus and Aster.

Green green badlands

Otter directly below the eagle at water line

Always up for a new adventure.
Moraine Lake in Banff National Park

Where I'm Rooted

My roots are in Colorado.

Prairie Dog likes it here, too.

My family is from the Midwest for several generations and from Europe before that.  I was born in (horrors!) Southern California.  I live in Oklahoma.
But this (Colorado Rockies and suburban Denver) is home.  I have roots here.

Set down your roots where you may.
In the meantime, The Mister and I are off on a vacation from our vacation and checking out Boise.

Two nights camping in tent older than any of us, all still smiling.

 

We learn, we forget, we keep on learning

My travels as of when I started college

Grading exams leads to shudders and sighs about what my students don't know. Sometimes I'm sad because it was a clear teaching failure; the students did not learn what I taught them in class.  Sometimes they don't read ("anabolic" is not the same as "anaerobic" and just because a student skims the last two syllables does not make, "Which of these processes is anabolic?" a trick question).  Sometimes they don't think.  And sometimes they just don't know stuff.  They can't label a map with where potatoes and wheat were domesticated because they can't find Peru and Iraq on a map.  They can't answer questions about increases in corn yields not because they didn't learn the significant changes in corn breeding, but because they don't know when the US mid-west was settled and when World War I was.  Stuff.  Stuff American college students should just know, in my opinion.

My map now

Meanwhile, whenever I advise my students about other classes, I am stunned by what I have forgotten.  I can no longer integrate anything (in the area under a curve sense) and can only write about 15 of the 1,500 Chinese characters I once knew.  That's not really surprising since I do not use calculus (although perhaps I should) and it's been 23 years since I last studied Chinese.  But I still vote and can no longer espouse all of the amendments in the right order.  I'm a failure at US Presidents in the 1800s (aside, I suppose, from Lincoln and Grant).  I had to look up properties of a normal distribution recently, although I still use stats all the time.

Travels with my husband and ex-boyfriend

Adult travels without parents, husband or boyfriend

And then there's the stuff I didn't know as a college student and have learned since.  Halfway through college I didn't know what NPR was.  I didn't know what a penstemon was. I could not name a Joni Mitchell song. I hadn't read anything by a South American writer, not Gabriel Garcia Marquez, not Isabelle Allende, not Mario Vargas Llosa.  I probably couldn't use "cladistics" in a sentence.  I didn't drink beer.  I didn't eat raw oysters.  I  had no idea that there were whole parts of the US where stone houses are the norm. I had never, ever googled anything.

I know so much different stuff now. Much of it that I can't imagine not knowing.  I'm regularly amazed at twenty-somethings doing a great job of parenting because I can't fathom that they know enough.  I'm drawing from 41 years of experiences and I feel I'm barely scraping by.  There is just so much to learn. About everything.

I've been working on this post for several days and I'm still not sure where I am going with it.  Part of it is in a call to leniency when dealing with the young. They just can't know that much.  Even the well-traveled (like me when I started college-- top map*) have huge gaps.  Part of it is a call for leniency from the relatively less young to those of us younger.  We just haven't had as many opportunities to experience as much as you have. And please feel free to laugh at any of us when we think that we've figured it out.

But mostly, it is a call to keep learning thing.  To put yourself in new places.  To read more.  To experience. To go. To learn.

And then maybe you won't be so mortified with all the things you forget.

* Key for the top two maps is white- unvisited. Red-drive by (or longer visit when I was one).  Orange- at least spent the night and learned some things.  Blue- multiple visists or an extended trip (e.g. honeymoon to Newfoundland).  Green- lived there.
The third is places I have been with my husband (who I met when I turned 31) orange, my ex-boyfriend (blue) or both (green). Wyoming should be green on that map. The last map was a project with some of my students in mind, who think that they need to have met their mate or be part of a traveling family in order to explore.  These are places I have been without my parents, husband, or ex-boyfriend.  I took the train across New Mexico and the bus from Denver to Santa Fe. I think it should count for something. Learn more and make your own map here on defocus.net.  I think the prairie dog map would look much like the husband map, but the prairie dog was not yet on the scene as of the Yellowstone-Glacier trip.

The pines of the Mister

On our recent (read "over a month ago") trip West, Le Cirque de Sierra, I kept crossing paths with myself.

Utah Prairie Dog

Second-grader me was very excited we made the tunnel into Zion without stopping.  I was embarrassed when I saw high school me "showering" at the base of Bridal Veil Falls with the rest of her church youth group, and no reminders about how dirty we were (many days without showers packed double into un-air-conditioned vans after one caught fire in Nevada) could ease my regret that I had ever been that tacky and thoughtless as to ruin the falls experience for all the other visitors.  College me liked SE Utah much better on that sunny Spring Break than in a gale force dust storm making it hard to stay on the road.  Modern me couldn't help bragging about camping in the snow in Yosemite and on the Mojave in February with my Scottish Ranger* boyfriend of 17 years ago.  Even grad school me made an appearance contrasting the desert right after the cold rain in 2003 with baked Death Valley in June.

Our (Black-Tailed) Prairie Dog

I travel.  I remember places.  It's not a bad thing, overall.

But it can be a bit disconcerting when every exit off of I-70 reminds me of another trip with another person.

At Bryce Canyon.  Not Jeffrey's.

So I took some time to consciously note what was different about this trip from all of the trips of my past.  There were new destinations, of course; I hadn't previously been to Bryce Canyon, Las Vegas, Death Valley (torture on my ears), Mono Lake or Devil's Postpile.  There were new animals: Utah Prairie Dogs in Bryce and Beldings Ground Squirrels swarming the park in June Lake, where we stayed.  There was the Mister, Dianthus, Aster and the Parents-in-Law.  And there were the pines.  Conifers of the Sierra make me smile in connection to a whole lot of bad puns and experiences of my past.  When Dianthus and Aster started collecting large cones, I first thought they were just adding to my collection of Ponderosa recollections.  A few days later, I did some investigation: "It turns out the cones are Jeffrey's**," I announced.
My Mother-in-Law looked at me quizzically, as if to ask, "The cones belong to my son?"
In my mind they do now.

At Bryce Canyon, Jeffery.

Yosemite Squirrel with gray shoulder

He has Mammoth Lakes all to himself in my memory, for now.

*He's not actually Scottish, but since I met him in Scotland and he loves Scotland, I usually think of him that way.
**Jeffrey (or Jeffrey's) Pines, Pinus jeffreyi.  They are confined mostly to lower montane elevations of the east side of the Southern Sierra Nevada.  The Mister does not spell his name that way.